We Think It's Stormy Now.....1968 Was Far Worse....And We Survived

Historians have long written about inflection points in history. In American history, events surrounding the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War & Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and WWII, are all such points.

It’s arguable that we may very well be living though another one right now. But clearly the last great historical inflection point came exactly fifty years ago, and reached its apogee in the year of 1968. Lyndon Johnson was President, and a series of events led us to believe like Yeats, “that the center cannot hold, and that mere anarchy was loose upon the land.”

The Tet Offensive, MLK and RFK assassinations, the Praque Spring, racial conflicts, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek reelection and the election of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, made 1968 quite a year.

Lyndon Johnson presided over it all and that's the story that historian Kyle Longley tells in LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval

My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Kyle Longley:

Can You Remember When Bipartisan Public Policy Once Mattered?

It’s hard to believe from the rhetoric coming from both sides of the campaign trail this year, but there once was a time when policy mattered. When candidates on both sides talked about programs and public policy.

Perhaps it was Reagan wanting to shrink the size of government and drown it in a bathtub, or Bill Clinton declaring that the era of big government is over. The fact is we have stopped looking to government as an institution of proactive change. While it still may have a role in crisis, as we saw in 2008 and 2009, its larger role, to shape the betterment of life in America, has long ago reached a kind of perigee.

Perhaps the last time policy mattered was during the time of LBJ and the Great Society. A time when bipartisan politics really worked. This is the era that Randall Wood takes us into in Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism.

My conversation with Randall Woods:

Why Political Marriages Matter

What goes on inside of a marriage is always a mystery. With a political marriage, even more so. We all know the stories of the neighbors who have the apparently idyllic marriage, that ends in divorce. Or the couple that battles incessantly, that have been together for 40 years. These dynamics, and the psychological mechanism behind them are truly a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

However, with political marriages, and with public figures, we get a better glimpse. After the fact, we often have letters, tapes, diaries and tell-alls that become a part of the public record. In analyzing them, we learn a lot about how the marriage worked, how it shaped the individuals and in turn how it shaped history.

This is what we learn about LBJ and Lady Bird in Betty Boyd Caroli’s Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President.

My conversation with Betty Boyd Caroli:

Is Vietnam the "original sin" of American foreign policy?

Look around the political and social landscape today. The polarizing debates about who we are, what we stand for as a nation and as a people, are all issues that seem to be re-litigated over and over again, particularly since and in the context of the 60’s.

It was Fifty years ago this month that LBJ began the escalation of the Vietnam War. And in many ways that war has become the “original sin” of the theology of America. If slavery was the “original sin” that still haunts our domestic politics, Vietnam is the “original sin” that still haunts the conduct of our foreign policy and America's place in the world.

The world may little note nor long remember what went on in the killing fields of Vietnam, but for American, it’s very much a part of who we are. And to fully understand it, may be the key to finally moving beyond it.

Christian Appy takes us back to this unique time in American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

My conversation with Christian Appy: